Please stop killing trees for my phone books.

I like trees.
I use the web (like nearly 70% of All Americans)
I don’t want printed phone books.

Today, a loud thunk on the front porch signaled the start of a very efficient, yet wasteful process that I suspect is repeated in households and businesses across the nation.

1. Phone book arrived on my porch.
2. Phone book was picked up by me.
3. Phone book was put in recycling bin (or worse, trash)

How many others out there do this exact thing? The Always-On Internet and local marketing online are killing the usefulness of the phone book, at least in my household.

I don’t get it, but surveys show phone books seem to be holding their own, the Kelsey Group reports some interesting stats:

A random sample of 500 teens and 1,000 adults in the U.S. were asked to indicate where they would “turn to first” when looking for a business in their area. Print Yellow Pages was, not surprisingly, the No. 1 choice among all consumers surveyed. The one exception was teens, who indicated they would first turn to search engines when looking for local business information.

• All consumers surveyed – print Yellow Pages, 61%; search engines, 12%; directory assistance, 12%; online Yellow Pages, 7%
• Annual income over $75,000 – print Yellow Pages, 51%; search engines, 27%; online Yellow Pages, 14%; directory assistance, 6%
• Teens – search engines, 47%; print Yellow Pages, 28%; directory assistance, 13%; online Yellow Pages, 9%

I think that you’ll see the population as a whole using search engines 50% of the time within 3-5 years as their first choice.

I like Marshall Brain’s blog post about phone books also.

I want to OPT OUT… I’m going to find out how. I will post it. Please, if you do what I do, opt out of receiving phone books and save some trees!

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One Response to “Please stop killing trees for my phone books.”

1. Aug
   8
   2007
   At 2:53 pm Etznab Says:

   No state currently has a “do not deliver” option. Some state actually REQUIRE that all customers receive a phone book. Read more about what folks are trying to do to reduce the problem at the Produt Stewardship Institute.

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